“Dear lad, what is the use o’ my teaching of you,” said David reproachfully. “Don’t I keep on telling o’ you as they’d srivel up; and what’s a pear then? It ain’t as if it was a walnut, where the srivel’s a ornyment to the shell.”
“Then let’s lie wait for my gentleman with a couple o’ sticks.”
David’s wrinkled face expanded, and his eyes nearly-closed.
“Hah! Now you’re talking sense, sir,” he said, in a husky whisper, as if the idea was too good to be spoken aloud. “Hazel sticks, sir—thick ’uns?”
“Hazel! A young scoundrel!” cried Tom.
“Nay, he’s an old ’un, sir, in wickedness.”
“Hazel is no good. I’d take old broomsticks to him,” cried Tom indignantly. “Oh, I do hate a thief.”
“Ay, sir, that comes nat’ral, ’speshly a thief as comes robbin’ of a garden. House-breakers and highwaymen’s bad enough; but a thief as come a-robbin’ a garden, where you’ve been nussin’ the things up for years and years—ah! there’s nothing worse than that.”
“You’ve got some old birch brooms, David,” cried Tom, without committing himself to the gardener’s sentiments.
“Birch, sir? Tchah! Birch would only tickle him, even if we could hit him on the bare skin.”